Chestertown, MD — The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience has appointed Dr. Fredrika J. Teute, a nationally prominent scholar and editor in the field of early American history, as its new C.V. Starr Fellow. Dr. Teute will spend the entire academic year 2007-8 in residence in Chestertown, working on a book and teaching at Washington College. She was selected from among dozens of applicants for this year's fellowship.
As Editor of Publications at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture—a leading center for the study of colonial history, sponsored jointly by the College of William & Maryand Colonial Williamsburg—Dr. Teute has shaped some of the most seminal works in early American history published over the past two decades. In 2006 alone, books published by Omohundro received 10 major prizes, including the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award and the American Historical Association's James A. Rawley Prize.
At the same time, Dr. Teute has pursued research on her own project, an exploration of the formation of national identity in early Washington, D.C. Her book focuses on the career of the novelist, journalist, and saloniste Margaret Bayard Smith, a little-known but fascinating figure in the rough-and-tumble world of Jeffersonian-era politics. The yearlong C.V. Starr Center Writing Fellowship will afford Teute an opportunity to temporarily lay down her editor's pencil and complete her manuscript.
"The Starr Center is an ideal place for me, with its focus on the Revolutionary period and origins of the United States and its locale not far from Washington, D.C.," said Dr. Teute. "These are the era, concerns, and setting of my own study."
"A primary mission of the Starr Center is to foster innovative approaches to the American past," said Adam Goodheart, the Center's Hodson Trust-Griswold Director. "Dr. Teute's book—weaving together political and social history, literature and the fine arts, through the life story of an extraordinary woman—will, I believe, show readers early America in a whole new light. I am delighted that we are supporting her work."
Dr. Teute received her B.A. at Radcliffe College, her M.A. at the College of William & Mary, and her Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. She has served as associate editor of the Papers of James Madison and the Papers of John Marshall, as well as Editor of Publications at the Virginia Historical Society. She has been a Mellon Fellow at the Huntington Library and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society, of which she is also an elected member. She has co-edited several books and published numerous scholarly articles in leading publications. In addition to her role at the Omohundro Institute, Dr. Teute is a Lecturer in History at the College of William & Mary.
"Dr. Teute's residence in Chestertown provides our students with a wonderful opportunity and promises to enhance the status and reach of the Starr Center in the scholarly community," said Assistant Professor of History Kenneth Miller. While at Washington College, Dr. Teute will teach an undergraduate course and deliver a public lecture on her project.
Established in 2000 with a grant from the New York-based Starr Foundation, the C.V. Starr Center draws on the special historical strengths of Washington College and colonial Chestertown to explore the early republic, the rise of democracy, and the manifold ways in which the founding era continues to shape American culture, through innovative educational programs, scholarship, and public outreach, and especially by supporting and fostering the art of written history. In cooperation with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and George Washington's Mount Vernon, the Center administers the George Washington Book Prize, a $50,000 annual prize recognizing outstanding published works that contribute to a greater understanding of the life and career of George Washington and/or the Founding era.
October 2, 2007
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